


Challenge 7: The Five Senses

by nomical



Series: And Then There Was Porn (Summer Pornathon '14) [7]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Fate & Destiny, M/M, Red String of Fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 08:45:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2263290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomical/pseuds/nomical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With a final score of 383, this was my last entry to Team Envy's WINNING summer. I love everyone on this team <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Challenge 7: The Five Senses

For as long as anyone can tell, people have been born with strings on their fingers. Invisible to all but the connected, these strings start off colourless but can cycle through many colours in one lifetime. The druids call them "destiny threads", for they only form between those fate has chosen for each other.

Merlin is born with five strings on his right hand. As a child, he liked to wiggle his fingers and watch each of them tremble and pull taught. When his mother makes the decision to send him to Camelot he goes willingly, eagerly anticipating finding at least one of his connected.

The first one he meets properly is Arthur. With the adrenalin of the moment, it isn't until Arthur has his hand behind his back that he feels his thumb pulsing. When they throw him to the dungeon floor, he finally gets a look at his hand and sees his thumb string glowing a faint blue.

In his first week he meets three more of his connected. Gwen's thread instantly turns a sunny yellow. Morgana's is a slightly darker shade but it's yellow all the same. Kilgharrah's is an odd waxy orange, the colour of his eyes and Merlin files that away for closer inspection later. Arthur's confuses him. It pulls on him when he and Arthur are apart in a way the other threads don't and Arthur refuses to acknowledge its existence.

Arthur either can't see the thread or pretends it doesn't exist. Sometimes Merlin is convinced he can feel it; the times when he angles his hand to pull Merlin along by the thread speak volumes, but they never talk about it. Not even after Arthur risks his life for the Mortaeus flower and Merlin wakes to find the thread has finally settled on a colour - faint but permanent red.

Over the years, the colours of Merlin's threads change. Mordred appears to claim the final string, starting blue and ending a poison green. Morgana's fades to a sickly green before landing on dark emerald. Gwen's stays a stalwart yellow, but the tension lessons as she grows into a queen and their relationship fades. The only change that takes Arthur's thread is the darkening of the red. Merlin would be embarrassed about it but Arthur never acknowledges it.

Until the last day. On the last day, when two of Merlin's threads have already faded to black and turned to dust, and Arthur is dying in his arms. He presses their right hands together in a way they haven't touched since that first fight, and Merlin feels the pulse once more. Arthur looks down slightly and in that moment Merlin knows with every fibre of his being that Arthur knows, that Arthur has always known. As he looks out over the water and says his final goodbyes, his thread is red as ever and trailing after the boat in its wake.

It's not long after that day that Kilgharrah's string darkens and falls. He returns to Camelot and does his best to aid Gwen, and their thread glows gold once more. It's in her last days she tells him that her thread with Arthur was never red, and that it had fallen off at the moment of his death.

For a thousand years, Merlin walks the earth alone, the red string on his thumb the only reminder of his past life. Until one day, it moves. It's only a slight vibration but it's enough to have Merlin pushing through time and space to find what's on the other end. Arthur is barely out of the lake before Merlin crashes into him and knocks them both back into the water.

They have no need for words and let their lips and hands do the talking their voices cannot. They pull and tear at each other's clothes in an overwhelming need to get closer, to say all the things denied to them in the past. As Arthur leans over his back, he joins their right hands together. The pulse of rightness that shoots through him is amplified by Arthur pressing in behind him. It feels like sanity is restored after years of living in darkness and Merlin clutches at it desperately, willing the pain of memory to be erased.

When they collapse together, spent and covered in mud, Arthur wraps his arms around Merlin's middle, tangling their fingers together. The pulse from their thread isn't quite as strong anymore, but to Merlin it's the best thing he's ever felt.

 


End file.
